Last week I received word that the entire office would be headed to "Seattle" to visit the head office of "The Rock Wood Fired Pizza" (The Rock). You see in addition to Famoso Neapolitan Pizzeria (which there are 15 of in Canada), we also are the Canadian Franchisee for The Rock. Up till now there is only one in Canada, in Calgary, so it's not been much of an issue in our office. But there are now 4 more opening up, and we'll be playing a much more active roll.
The Rock (http://therockwfp.com/) is very different from Famoso. Started in Seattle, they have about the same amount of locations as us, about 10 or 15. And if you want to open a Rock in Canada you have to go through us at Famoso. Justin, Christian and Jason (my three bosses) were already down in Seattle with Sandy (the owner of the stand alone Canadian Rock in Calgary). So Kitson, Mitra, Polina and I all met at Polina's house in Kitslano at 7:30am to hit the road.
The visit to The Rock head office was quite interesting. We met Don and Jay who are the owners and were very interesting to listen to their story. Jay's son is an actor who was in Twilight (a vampire movie?) and his daughter is Jennifer Aniston's hairdresser. Not that I really care, but everyone else was in a tizzy about this info. Don admitted that most of the The Rock was a him being personally selfish adding whatever HE wanted to the restaurant.
Inside the head office was a "sitting room" that Don & Jay like to host guests. It had a sign above it that said "Saints and Sinners". Here is Polina being a Sinner
The room was pretty interesting with all these fake candles glowing.
Our tour of the head office moved onto the store room, where I snapped a few pics. that's Jay, second from the left.
More of the store room with Don on the far right.
Don owns a 65 Corvette with a new Corvette engine in it. It was pretty impressive.
It was a really great visit to Sumner, Washington, and Don and Jay were great hosts. They were both very interesting to listen to, and like all Americans I ever meet, were super friendly. The rest of the day we visited 3 Rock's in the Seattle area, driving around I was in the back seat with Mitra.
the next group of shots give you an idea of The Rock is like inside. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it before. The interesting thing is it's very popular with families and kids. that's Polina, Sandy and Jason.
though the restaurants have many unusual features, like the shipping containers above, there is always the theme of 70's/80's rock and roll with album covers everywhere.
A waste of perfectly good guitars? Perfect use for crappy guitars? or just an awesome chandelier?
They had shooters in Jello that you "inject". they were a lot of fun.
I ordered a 5 ounce Margarita that comes with a Corona tipped into in. it was actually delicious though I can't remember when I had a drink with 5 ounces of hard liquor in it. BTW you get to keep the bucket.
Once the evening snuck in, the real atmosphere on The Rock took over, with the lighting trusses shinning warm light over everything like you are at a rock concert. And everywhere you look is skulls, guitars and crumbling brick.
More drinks, this one was served in a lava lamp that lights up your drinks switching colours. We were injecting jello shooters into our Lava Lamp drinks.
No two The Rocks are the same, and everwhere you look there is something crazy and unique, like this church inside the restaurant that housed about 8 booths
I had the sampler of The Rock's beer they have made. It was actually really good and nothing like the canned American beer us Canadians are used too
The beautiful Polina enjoying a glass of The Rock's red wine. It's actually 50 or 60 dollars a bottle. They don't sell very much of it, but as I mentioned earlier, much of The Rock is just Don and Jay personal indulgences. The love red wine (and so does Polina)
It was a great trip, even though we didn't actually make it to Seattle, but instead Sumner, Renton and Tacoma. We made it back to Vancouver around 10pm that night, so it was a long day. The back of that Accura was starting to get pretty cramped. Next time, we're taking the Equinox, we're staying over night, and we are visiting the actual city of Seattle.
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